Seven Psychopaths (4 Stars)

Marty is a Hollywood screenwriter suffering from writer's block. He's writing a script called "Seven Psychopaths", but apart from the film's title he has written nothing; he doesn't even have names or backgrounds for the psychopaths in his story. Marty's best friend Billy is an unemployed actor who believes in Marty's talent and does his best to encourage him. He puts a classified ad in a Los Angeles weekly magazine asking for psychopaths and serial killers to visit Marty to be interviewed.

That would be enough meat for a plot in itself, but there are further complications. Billy has a part-time job. Together with a partner he steals dogs from rich people and returns them for the reward, claiming that he "found" them. This works well until he steals a Shih Tzu from a gangster who hunts him down. Far from being scared, Billy suggests that the manhunt and the final showdown should be used as an inspiration for Marty's script. He drives Marty into the desert to witness the action.

At times the story is difficult to follow. It's difficult to tell which of the psychopaths are real and which are fictional characters in the screenplay. Even when a character seems to be fictional we later discover that he's based on a real life character. At first I tried to count the real psychopaths, but it got too complicated. In some cases one fictional character was based on more than one real life character. The film studios felt the need to name the seven and made the absolutely awful film poster that I've included below. The poster includes Marty (third from left) who isn't one of the psychopaths. Neither of the two women in the poster are psychopaths. I wouldn't classify the gangster (on the right) as a psychopath either, but that's arguable. Not that it really matters. It's still a good film, worth watching.